The smartest and most tragic creatures in the ocean, and we need to talk about it.
Octopuses have the largest brain-to-body ratio of any invertebrate. They’re problem solvers, escape artists, masters of camouflage. Genuinely brilliant creatures. Which makes what happens next even more heartbreaking.
Reproduction is basically a death sentence. When octopuses mate, the male uses a specialised “🍆 arm” to transfer sperm to the female. After mating, that arm falls off, and the male starts declining rapidly.
Romance is dead, and so is he, apparently.
But the female’s story is somehow worse. She can lay up to 400,000 eggs, and then she guards them obsessively, to the point that she stops eating, stops leaving, just watches over those eggs 24/7 until they hatch. By the time her babies emerge into the world, she’s usually already dying or dead. She never even gets to see them swim away.
It’s one of nature’s cruelest designs – these incredibly intelligent animals get one shot at reproduction, and it costs them everything.
Makes you appreciate them a bit differently, doesn’t it?
